The present invention relates generally to the field of security infrastructure and more particularly to a semiconductor device including enhanced variability and physical unclonable functionality (PUF).
Electronics may use integrated circuits (IC) using, for example, a substrate and additives to form a solid-state electronic device. Device variability during manufacture may hinder proper function, however, such manufacture variability may be utilized to enforce security information technology physically on an IC.
An integrated circuit (IC) is an electronic circuit which can be formed using silicon as a substrate and by adding impurities to form solid-state electronic devices, such as transistors, diodes, and resistors. Commonly known as a “chip,” an integrated circuit is generally encased in hard plastic, forming a “package.” Often, many such packages are electrically coupled so that the chips therein form an electronic circuit to perform certain functions.
During the IC manufacture process, radiation is focused through the mask and at certain desired intensity of the radiation. This intensity of the radiation is commonly referred to as “dosing” or “doping.” The focus and the doping of the radiation have to be precisely controlled to achieve the desired shape and electrical characteristics on the wafer.
Security of internet related circuitry and applications is needed to protect information within a networked, cloud, or internet environment. Various methods of securing data have been used, for example, Physical Unclonable Function (PUF). PUF is a physical encoding onto a chips in order to avoid cloning. Typically, a PUF is a function that is embodied in a physical structure and is easy to evaluate but hard to predict. Applications of PUF include challenge-response authentication, where access depends on providing correct responses to challenges, and the challenge-response pairs are generated by a PUF.